


Friend of Mine

by lawatsonholmes, Valeria2067



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Love, M/M, PTSD, Post-Reichenbach, References to Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-05
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawatsonholmes/pseuds/lawatsonholmes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valeria2067/pseuds/Valeria2067
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has come back from the "dead" after three years, and John must deal with emotions and desires he thought he'd buried with his friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rosy gold early morning sunlight spills across the smooth, milk-pale skin of Sherlock’s back, limning his sharp shoulder blades and the notched sweep of his spine. John wants to touch, wants to reach out and feel the heat of flesh that’s glowing and alive,  _Sherlock’s alive,_  wants to brush blunt fingertips from Sherlock’s shoulders to the curving dip of his lower back. 

John could. He could touch Sherlock because Sherlock is here in John’s bed, here in 221b, Sherlock is home, not dead, he’s living and breathing and  _right here._ So close, so easy to extend a hand and run his palm along silky skin and touch in a way that wasn’t allowed before, when John put a tentative hand on cold, black marble and said, “I was so alone, and I owe you so much,”  _before death and resurrection_ , before Sherlock showed up at the door and said, “John” with pain and joy and three years of strain and separation behind it, and John lashed out, bruised those enviable cheekbones, and Sherlock fell to his knees, wrapped long arms around John’s waist, and John finally touched, took Sherlock’s face in his hands and dropped tear-tinted kisses at temple and jaw. John never stopped touching after that, and Sherlock touched John, too. Now here they are in John’s bed, and John wants nothing more than to keep touching, and it scares the hell out of him.

Sherlock shifts his head on the pillow and turns to look at John. His eyes are liquid smoke, his mouth drawn into a thin line. “What’s wrong?” he asks, voice sleep-deep and rough.

John swallows.  _Wrong? It’s all wrong, and it’s all right._  “I think I—” He nervously swipes his tongue along his bottom lip and curls his hands into fists to keep from reaching out. “I need some time, Sherlock. We sh-should take things slow from here on out.”

Sherlock’s lush mouth narrows even more; his jaw muscles move for a moment, and his Adam’s apple bobs in that beautiful neck.  All of it takes barely seconds, and then he speaks with a pleasant, easy tone. “Of course, John. Perfectly understandable and reasonable.”  Sherlock even manages a smile, and John cannot remember now - his pained mind turning over, writhing and reaching for memories locked away - if this smile has the characteristics that set Sherlock’s “fake” smiles apart from his “real” ones.  

He’d never expected to see either sort again, and only now does he regret sacrificing the joy of those memories in order to stifle the howling ache of the loss.

And that’s one more reason to stop, to slow down. To see if all of these feelings are more than just relief, after all.

Sherlock slowly rises from the bed, pulls on a t-shirt that is too wide and too short. The familar silk dressing gowns are packed away, along with nearly everything else of his, locked in a bedroom that John has learned, taught himself at great pains, actually, to pretend no longer exists.

“I should have ample time to arrange my things again and sort out my room today.  You work your A&E shift, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Yeah,” John replies, voice a bit more clipped than he’d intended. “I should be back about seven-ish, I think.  Depends on the sorts of injuries or how many patients come through, you know.”  John remembers the first time he’d taken the extra work at the hospital’s Accident and Emergency unit.  Ella’s advice, actually.  _You couldn’t save, him, John, and you’ve wanted to place some blame on yourself, as his friend and as a doctor.  Yet you know that no doctor can save every patient. Perhaps it’s time to put yourself where you can save them. And where you can continue to see that not all of them will be saved._

John watches as Sherlock slips out the door, and the click of the latch is loud in the silent room. He steps forward, ready to follow Sherlock, always so ready to follow,  _so loyal, so quickly_ , but stops himself. John asked for time, and he knows he needs it, knows the roiling confusion in his head will only build if he doesn’t stop and think about this, about feelings,  _which Sherlock doesn’t do_ , and about the friendship John thought he had lost forever.

He sits on the edge of the bed and scrubs a hand over his face. The last three days he’s been deliriously happy—after that first bout of unchecked fury—but now his shoulders feel tight and a bittersweet ache blossoms in the middle of his chest. All the time Sherlock was gone, three long, blank years that threatened to stretch into an eternity of emptiness, all John wished for was his friend back and a chance to say all things he’d been unable to before. And now, John has Sherlock back, and he has said some of things he wanted to say, but only while Sherlock slept with John curled around him in the dark. Those whispered confessions frighten John almost as much as his pressing need to touch.

The alarm sounds, jerking John from his thoughts, and he slaps the button to shut it off. He stumbles to the wardrobe and removes trousers and jumper then throws them on the bed. He grabs his dressing gown from the hook on the door and heads downstairs to shower, hoping the sluice of hot water will wash away his gathering tension.

*

John’s signing off on release orders for the woman in Room 2 when a commotion at the EMT entrance distracts him. The paramedics burst through the door rolling a gurney, and John watches two nurses and Dr. Stephens converge on the scene. John can see nothing of the patient, but from the stats relayed by the paramedics to Dr. Stevens, John knows the injury is life-threatening. He dashes off his signature and hands the papers to the clerk then hurries over to see if he can help.

The sight that greets him is gruesome—the patient is slack-jawed and dead-eyed, hair dark with matted blood that lightens to crimson as it runs in rivulets down the patient’s face. The top of the patient’s head is cracked open, folds of scalp peeling back like flower petals, flesh red as ripe melon. John reaches forward without thinking.

“Watson!” Dr. Stephens barks. He waves the EMTs to Trauma Room 1 and then turns to face John.

“What happened?” John’s voice sounds flat and dead to his own ears.

“Accident. Severe head trauma, obviously.”

John’s breath hitches, and he feels the beginnings of hysterical laughter bubbling in his throat. “Obviously.”  _Obviously, Sherlock would say, always in that annoyingly exasperated tone_.

“Look, I have to get in there.” Dr. Stephens tips his head in the direction of the trauma room. “You all right?”

“Fine.” John nods. “I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s all fine.” The last is nothing but a broken mumble.

Dr. Stephens eyes John a moment but lets it go.

John watches as the door to the trauma room shuts, and then he’s heading toward the entrance at a decided clip. Once he gets outside, he sucks cold, clear air deep into his lungs, leans against the building to keep himself upright as his knees threaten to give way. When he closes his eyes, he sees  _empty silver eyes and black curls and blood, Christ, John knows head wounds bleed a lot, he’s a doctor, a doctor, let him through, that’s his friend, his best friend, and he should have known, John should have said, should have told him._

John gulps down a deep breath and throws his head back against the brick. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

It’s only when he gets back inside that he realizes there’s blood on his hands.

*

Those same hands shake as he unlocks the door to the flat around nine o’clock that night.  He hadn’t gone right home after his shift; he’d accepted an invitation to have a pint or two with some of the other staff, and spent the last two hours listening to his own hollow, frightened laughter, seeing his own trembling fingers clinging to his glass.  When a trip to the gents forced him to look into reddened, devastated eyes in the mirror, he knew there was no point to this. No point, perhaps, to  _any_  of this anymore.

Sherlock is setting out freshly-dusted lab equipment on the worktops and table in the kitchen.  John can’t stop a low chuckle, but he stifles the end of it as he clears his throat. 

“Sherlock, I… I need to speak with you.”

A pale green flask brings out even more of the beauty in those amazing, god, impossibly gorgeous eyes as Sherlock holds it up to the light for a moment, before carefully setting it down. The rolled-back cuff of his white dress shirt looks green in parts beside the coloured glass.

Looking over the table, even John can see that there isn’t a third of what Sherlock would need here if they were indeed planning to go back to the way things were.  

Christ. How can either of them even dream of going back to that? 

“I’m listening, John.”  Sherlock is still standing, one hand on the table, the other lightly resting against his own slender middle — John’s mind flashes back to their first case,  _the hallway, laughing and out of breath. Everything new and exciting._

He recoils as from a blow.  No, goddammit. He’d put that away! He didn’t want…couldn’t afford… to have it come back ever again, and now here it is, hurting him, crushing him like it did those first days after Sherlock.. after he…

John closes his eyes for a moment, places his hand over his lips, willing himself to keep down the worst of it. 

Sherlock’s footsteps approach, and John feels a hand on his arm. “John, are you all right? Tell me what happened.”

John jerks his arm free, leaving Sherlock’s hand suspended for a moment in empty space.

“You know what, Sherlock?” he says, barely able to hide his rising anger, “You’re the bloody genius detective, yeah?  You tell me, Hmm?  You tell me if I’m all right.  You tell me what bloody well happened when a patient with head trauma… massive head trauma, Sherlock… got wheeled in right beside me, eh?”

“John, I’m —”

“I almost FUCKING LOST IT, Sherlock!  AGAIN!  And I haven’t… that hasn’t happened since the day after your funer-”  John gulps back a sob, grimacing, battling against his tightening throat.  ”Your funeral.”  He is shaking hard, every muscle trembling with pain and tautness and fury.

Sherlock takes another step toward John but is stopped by a a strong hand at his chest. John’s fingers fist the material, keeping Sherlock from moving forward or back.

“You made me live through your fucking funeral, Sherlock.”

Pain is showing on Sherlock’s face, now, too. “Yes, John. I - I saw you.” He swallows as he sees the fire rise even higher in John’s eyes. “The image of you suffering that day has haunted every moment of my life since.”

“Haunted you, has it? Well listen to me.” John pulls Sherlock closer, down a bit to meet his eyes. “I. FUCKING. LIVED IT.”

Sherlock flinches, and there’s a flare of satisfaction in the pit of John’s stomach. The gratification of that first punch comes rushing back, and John wants to hit, wants to hurt. He hasn’t let his temper go in a good long while because he’s been dead inside, empty, because Sherlock was dead and with him the only happiness John had known since blood-dust, sweat-soaked days under the Afghan sun.

Sherlock reaches to grasp John’s wrists, but John tightens his hold on Sherlock’s shirt and shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says, jaw taut and teeth clenched, “Don’t touch me, or I’ll—”

“Do it,” Sherlock says, low and urgent. “Hit me. Punch me. Beat me. You want blood, John? I’ll give you blood.” Sherlock grabs the green flask and smashes it against the table, wraps his long fingers around the ragged edges before holding the sharpened neck out to John. “Cut me open.”

John releases Sherlock, who stumbles against the table. John plucks the glass from Sherlock’s hand and hurls it at the wall, where it shatters further in a shower of opalescent green. “Don’t fucking act the martyr, Sherlock. Don’t offer yourself up for penitence and think that will make everything OK.”

“Then what do you WANT!” Sherlock launches himself at John, shoves him back and crowds into his space,  _like he always did, always so close, too close, never close enough_.

“I don’t know,” John says and punches Sherlock before he can stop himself.

Sherlock’s head whips back with the force of the blow as he staggers backward. When he rights himself, he claps a hand to his jaw, and John sees blood oozing between his pale fingers.

Sherlock swipes his chin, sprinkling his white shirt with blood droplets. “Feel good?”

“You tell me.”

Sherlock licks his lips. “Do it again then.”

John laughs but there’s no humor in it. “That what you want? Want me to just keep hitting you until I feel better?”

“If it will—” Sherlock moves closer, and John watches the slide of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “If it will make you forgive me, then yes.” Sherlock reaches out and cups John’s cheek. “Because if you don’t forgive me, John, he wins.”

John doesn’t need to ask  _He?_  because he knows, knows by the tone of Sherlock’s voice, the distant, hard look in his eyes. 

Sherlock curls his fingers against John’s face. “He’ll have burnt the heart out of me.” Sherlock bows his head, presses his forehead to John’s.

John smells the sharp, iron tang and feels the sticky wetness of the blood on Sherlock’s hand, but he leans into the touch anyway. There’s a sob working its way up through John’s throat, and he tries to swallow it down, bites his lip to keep it from escaping.

Sherlock straightens, slips his other hand into John’s hair. “Please,” he whispers.

John gazes up at Sherlock, and he knows Sherlock must see the tears because John can feel them threatening to seep from the corners of his eyes. He opens his mouth to speak, finds his voice deserts him, so he clears his throat. “I can’t—” His breath hitches. “Do this, whatever this is. I can’t.”

Sherlock drops his head and releases John, lets his thumb slide along John’s bottom lip, then he sags against the table.

John turns and starts upstairs, the taste of Sherlock’s blood on the tip of his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

John lets the welling tears roll silently down his cheeks as he undresses in the darkness of his bedroom.  Sherlock’s blood is still on John’s lips and tongue. Sherlock’s devastated expression is still a lingering after-image in John’s eyes.

And it’s only been three days since the man returned from the “dead.” 

Only three fucking days.

His hands trembling, John pulls on pyjama bottoms, removes his watch, and sits on the edge of the bed. 

 _I can’t do this.  I can’t._   He tells himself, breathing in the still air, exhaling roughly. Sherlock had been everything to him. Energy, purpose, life itself.  Then he’d disappeared - died- and had taken John’s heart into the grave, too.

Now here he is, alive - and John’s beating, bruised heart is with him.  

 _How do I put my heart back?_  The wound has closed, now, and inside is just a mass of tough, knotted scar tissue.  

John falls back, then rolls over onto his side, curls his knees up, and numbly counts the teardrops as they fall from the bridge of his nose onto the mattress.

A light knock at the door breaks the silence.

He runs a hand over his eyes and clears his throat before using a calm but stern voice: “Sherlock, I said I can’t talk about this tonight.  Go to bed… or go… whatever you do when normal people sleep.”   He shifts so that his back is fully toward the door.

The door cracks open and the voice he’d gotten used to hearing only in dreams - usually nightmares - speaks softly: “John, I’m sorry, but this can’t wait until morning. It has to be now. I have to know now.”

Teeth clenched, mouth pressed tight, John sits up in bed.  ”Know WHAT?”

Sherlock moves toward John in the darkness, one hand reaching out.

“Give me your right hand.  Please.”

John exhales, irritated and… something else perhaps. He stares at Sherlock’s outstretched hand until he can see it, and Sherlock, fairly well in the moonlit room.

Reluctantly, John offers his right hand. Sherlock’s left hand clasps it.

Then before John can move or react, Sherlock handcuffs their wrists together.

John blinks and blinks again, trying to ascertain that he is, in fact, not dreaming. The weak moonlight that filters through the window paints Sherlock’s pale skin in a faint, unearthly glow and glints off the shiny silver handcuffs, giving the whole scene a surreal eeriness, and John wonders if he’s fallen asleep and this is just another nightmare, another way for his subconscious to reinforce his unhealthy attachment to,  _no, obsession with_ , Sherlock. But then the metal links clink loudly in the darkness as Sherlock crawls into the bed next to John, and John finds himself moving over to avoid the bulk of Sherlock’s weight as he settles in. Sherlock is warm and pressed against John’s side, and the heat assures John that this is real, this is happening  _right now_.

Sherlock has actually handcuffed them together.

John turns as much as he can given the resrtiction of the cuffs and glares at Sherlock. “What the HELL are you playing at?”

Sherlock’s eyes are dark, diamond-clear irises almost completely obscured by dilated pupils. “I’m not letting you go.”

John grits his teeth. “You’re not letting me go to bed? Why the hell not?”

“I know you, John.” Sherlock takes a deep breath. “When you’re upset with me, you run. You go out for a walk or you go to Mike’s or to whatever woman you’re wasting time with. You leave. And I’m not letting you go this time. I spent—” Sherlock looks away. “I spent too much time away from you to watch you walk away from me now.”

John drops his head onto the pillow and stares at the ceiling. “You left me first.”

“I—”

“No.” John shakes his head, feels the anger gathering in his chest, his trampled heart beating triple-time. “You fucking left me, Sherlock. You tried to make me think that the only thing I believed in, the only thing that mattered, was a lie. And then you left me behind.” He turns his head to look at Sherlock. “I would have followed you anywhere. Done anything you wanted me to do. But you didn’t fucking trust me enough to—”

“I trusted you more than ANYONE, John!  And you will do well to understand what that means for me. I gave up something much more important than my life for you.  I gave up my reputation, my whole career, my WORK, John.  Dying would have been nothing to me if it meant keeping my reputation intact.  But I wasn’t given that choice. I had to sacrifice MORE than my life.” Sherlock grinds his teeth, dealing with the pain of that moment again. “And I did it, freely, for you, John. To save you.”

John huffs, indignant. “Right. Cheers, mate. Thanks for that.”  He turns his face to the left, away from Sherlock. “Good to know my life ranks up there with your work after all.”

“Your life, John, is the most precious thing in the world to—”

“SHUT UP, Sherlock!  Shut up NOW, before you embarrass yourself EVEN MORE, all right?” 

Sherlock’s mouth clamps shut tightly, and a grimace of pain plays along his lips. John hears him inhale a sharp breath, as if a knife has cut into that tall, lean body.

“You want to know how ‘precious’ my life was to you?  Hmm?  Was it, oh, precious enough to make you think twice before you baited a madman - one who nearly killed us both at a public pool?  Was it precious enough to keep you from drugging me and making me think…” John laughs, briefly, in exasperation, “Making me think a fucking hell-hound was seconds away from ripping out my throat?”

Sherlock exhales loudly, but keeps quiet.

“And while we’re on the lovely subject, how about THESE FUCKING THINGS?” John lifts their manacled hands and shakes them, rattling the metal of the cuffs. “You took me hostage to help you escape, and then you dragged me in front of a GODDAMN BUS, Sherlock!” John’s breathing is ragged, and he stops for a moment to run a hand over his nose and mouth, fighting to keep a shred of composure before he continues. “So just… just leave off with the saving my precious life, all right?  It obviously isn’t precious to you.  To be honest, it doesn’t seem all that precious to me at the moment.”

“John,” Sherlock starts hesitantly.

John remains silent, save for his loud, rapid breathing.

“Please listen; I understand that I can’t ask you to trust me, or even to believe me so soon after… what I had to do.  But I am asking you to trust your senses, your heart.”  Sherlock pulls his cuffed hand up to the headboard, bringing John’s arm up and stretching it. 

“Sherlock, don’t-“

“You remember this sensation, John. Your body remembers it. It was the last night we were together, really together, as a unit, without the deception. I still hoped that there would be a way out of it, or at least a way that would allow you to come with me. That’s what I wanted, John.  And he knew that. He knew you were the most important thing in the universe, and he used that to destroy me.”

John shifts uncomfortably and tries to pull his arm back, but Sherlock is stronger, unbelievably so, and he holds their wrists in place.

“You followed me in front of that bus, even though you could have dug in your heels to stop me, or pulled us both out of the way.  I knew that I wouldn’t let the bus hit you, but  _you_ didn’t. And that’s when I decided that you were not to be trusted with preserving your own life. If you’d had any idea that I had survived, you would have risked everything to find me, John. You would have walked into the trap his men had set for you.  I could accept losing my reputation, my work, my life. I could not accept losing yours.”

John rolls awkwardly onto his side to face Sherlock and looks directly into his eyes. “You’re forgetting something in all this, Sherlock. The most important thing.” He swallows, feels the words stick in his throat, but it’s time to say them, time Sherlock hears some of things John kept to himself for so long, things it took him ages to figure out and accept, things he only realized in the underwater light of an abandoned warehouse during a conversation he wanted nothing more than to forget about. “You  _were_  my life. And when you died, I died. So you can say you did what you did to save me, but you—” John’s voice breaks, and he pauses, sucks in air. “You killed me.” John gulps another breath. “You should have let me walk into Moriarty’s trap because dying that way would have been preferable to the last three years without you.”

Sherlock’s eyes go wide, and he exhales shakily. “John.” He slips his free hand into the hair at John’s nape and grips hard, making John wince. “Don’t say that. Your dying was not,  _is not_ , acceptable. It will never be.”

John tries to turn his head away, but Sherlock holds fast and forces John to stay still. “Sherlock—”

Sherlock brings their cuffed hands down between them, shifts his wrist enough to slide his fingers between John’s, presses their palms together. “I knew what I had to do would hurt you, yes. But I had no choice. Your life is more important to me than anything.”

John’s laugh is dark and hollow. “We’re just going to keep going round with this, aren’t we? Because your life will always be the most important thing to me.”

Sherlock crowds closer, loosens his grip on John’s hair but cups his cheek instead. There’s an unholy light in Sherlock’s eyes, and John feels Sherlock’s hot breath against his face. “Why, John?”

John tips his head back. “You know why.”

Sherlock rubs his thumb along John’s jaw. “Say it. Please?”

John’s chest tightens. How can he do it? How can he say the words he’s kept locked up so long, words he buried with Sherlock?

“John.”

Sherlock’s so close that when he whispers John’s name, his lips brush John’s, and it’s electric, it’s like being set alight, and John knows he won’t—can’t—keep the words from surfacing. “I love you.” There’s a sob that comes from nowhere, and John shuts his eyes. “Christ, Sherlock, I love you so fucking much.”

———

_[to be continued in Chapter 3]_


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock captures John’s sobs with gentle, full lips, pulling John’s face closer, moving himself so that their bodies touch as fully as possible. John can’t think, can’t move; it feels as if an electric current is pouring into his body, paralyzing him, illuminating him, burning him away.

He doesn’t know if he can breathe, and nothing could matter less to him right now. Only  _this_ matters. Only Sherlock’s kiss…God, Sherlock, here, now, with him, connected to him…

Without warning, the kiss breaks. John opens his eyes to see Sherlock staring fixedly at him. 

John’s muddled thoughts scramble to remember something… something important… but those eyes…. what is it John needs to do, what…?

“Breathe, John.”

John draws in a ragged, gasping breath.

Right. That was it. Breathe.

John drags in lungfuls of air that have him panting, and his mind clears enough for him to realize he should put some distance between himself and Sherlock, or Sherlock will keep distracting him with slow, breathless kisses. John moves his face, but Sherlock doesn’t let him get far, instead slipping his free hand into John’s hair again to cradle the back of his head so he can’t turn away.

“You said you love me, John,” Sherlock says quietly, “Love, not ‘loved’. Which means you love me now, right now, despite feeling like you need distance, despite your anger, despite your…hurt. You love me.” Sherlock closes his eyes for a long moment; when they open, the look there is as naked and vulnerable as John has ever seen Sherlock, even more so than the night John sat with Sherlock by the hearth at an inn in Dartmoor and Sherlock confessed to doubting his own mind. “You must know that I—I…feel the same way about you.”

John brings his hand up and buries it in Sherlock’s dark curls, grasps hard enough to see a brief flicker of pain in Sherlock’s eyes, holds tight. “What way is that, Sherlock?”

Sherlock swallows nervously. “My feelings for you are the same as yours for me.”

John slides closer even closer to Sherlock, presses against him, and ignores the discomfort of their shackled wrists caught between them. “That’s not good enough. You’re going to have to tell me. I don’t care if you never say it again, but I just poured my fucking heart out to you, and you owe me those words. If you feel the same way, you owe me those words at least once.”

“I—” Sherlock bites his bottom lip, takes a slow, deep breath. “John.” His voice is low and rough, scraped raw. “I love you.” He inches forward, presses his lips to John’s. “I love you,” he whispers again.

John greedily takes Sherlock’s mouth, wants nothing more than to consume Sherlock’s sacred words, wants to take them inside, to keep them, to hold them, lock them in his body, in his veins.  John’s tongue searches, and he parts Sherlock’s lips for the first time.

The corresponding faint moan - a whimper? - from deep in Sherlock’s mouth sets John’s skin on fire. Fuck. Nothing has ever felt like this before, and he is desperate to have all of it, all of Sherlock’s body and mind and soul. NOW.

“Christ, Sherlock,” John breathes, resting his head against the long, pale neck. “What the bloody hell have you done to me?” He sinks his teeth, very, very gently into the beautiful skin, and he feels Sherlock’s entire body shiver. 

“John…” is all Sherlock can say.

John revels for a moment in the deep, silken, gorgeous sound  that drowns out the rustling of their clothes, the intermittent rattling of their cuffed hands pinned between them.

“Mmmm…” John replies, switching to adoring kisses along Sherlock’s pulse points, then down to the gorgeous hollow in the base of Sherlock’s neck.  When John’s tongue darts out to lick that indentation, Sherlock gasps and goes still for a moment.

Sherlock inhales sharply. “John. JohnJohnJohnJohnJohn,” he chants, and it’s a benediction, a request, a demand. He pulls John’s head up and kisses him again, a long, deep slide of lips and tongues that has the two of them gasping into one another’s mouths.

John wants to devour Sherlock, wants the taste of him to linger forever. He wants to touch every inch of Sherlock, memorize with the tips of his fingers the sharp angles and surprising curves, press perpetual fingerprints into Sherlock’s skin. He lets his free hand drift to Sherlock’s hip and down, where he catches the back of Sherlock’s knee and lifts so he can slide his leg between Sherlock’s thighs.

“Oh.” Sherlock rocks against John.

John feels the heat of Sherlock’s erection through the double layers of Sherlock’s trousers and his own pyjama pants, and he presses closer, moves his leg to create friction, while he nips along Sherlock’s jaw. When Sherlock moans, John pulls back and just looks, takes in the flush along Sherlock’s cheeks, the droop of his lush lower lip, the flutter of his impossibly long eyelashes. John has never seen anything as lovely and perfect as Sherlock open and unguarded.

“Unbutton your shirt,” John says and moves far enough away that Sherlock can lift his cuffed hand.

Sherlock does so silently, staring intently at John. When he reaches the final button, John pushes the sides of the shirt apart and dips his head, runs the flat of his tongue over one of Sherlock’s nipples then blows on it gently. He does the same to the other nipple before tugging it between his teeth.

Sherlock arches under the onslaught of John’s mouth and grabs John’s hip, takes the edge of his pyjama pants between two fingers. “Off,” he says. “John, get these off.”

“Yes, yes. You, too.” John reaches for the button and zip of Sherlock’s trousers.

After much awkward wrangling, made even more difficult by their cuffed hands and their refusal to stop kissing, both John and Sherlock are naked from the waist down. John groans when their cocks brush, and he flips onto his back, tugs Sherlock until he’s straddling John’s thighs. Sherlock grinds his hips forward and down as he bends to kiss John, and they swallow one another’s moans. Then Sherlock sits up, and John drinks in the sight of him, white shirt open and pushed off his shoulders, head thrown back, muscles of his long, pale neck taut and straining.

“Fucking gorgeous,” John says, “You’re so fucking gorgeous.” Tears sting his eyes again; he can’t stop them, though, and he doesn’t want to concentrate on anything but the vision of Sherlock flushed with pleasure, the push and slide of Sherlock against him. John blinks hard, then gasps as Sherlock shifts again, sending liquid fire down John’s spine.

“John,” Sherlock groans and moves his hips, rubs their cocks together, and it’s dry and rough but so perfect.

John runs his free hand over Sherlock’s chest, stops to feel the pounding of Sherlock’s heart as he rocks against John. Sherlock puts his hand over John’s and tips his head forward. He gazes into John’s eyes as he picks up John’s hand and kisses the palm. Then he slips his fingers between John’s, bends forward and captures John’s other hand and presses both hands into the mattress at John’s shoulders, uses his grip to hold himself over John as he rocks and rubs, and the entire time his eyes never leave John’s.

“Sh—Sherlock,” John says as he bucks upward.

Sherlock lowers himself, puts his lips to John’s ear, breathes deeply as John writhes beneath him. “John.” The sound of Sherlock’s voice pushes John closer and closer to the brink. “I love you.”

John cries out as he comes. A few more thrusts, and Sherlock comes, too, with John’s name on his lips.

They spend the next few moments panting, legs and fingers still entwined, each man unwilling to be the first to move or speak.  Sherlock shifts his long body a bit more to John’s right, then turns until he, too, is on his back. John clasps Sherlock’s hand, and the metal of the handcuffs clinks as he brings that hand to his lips, then rests it on his own chest. 

“So,” John starts out, still a bit breathless, his voice tentative, “This is.... this is certainly-“

“It is, yes.”

John turns to eye Sherlock, but sees only his placid expression gazing up at the ceiling.

“You have NO idea what I was going to say, Sherlock. Stop it.”

Sherlock’s eyes flick to the side for a second. “You were going to say this is certainly unexpected. Or new. Or an interesting development. Yes?”

John purses his lips for a moment.

“Fine.”

Sherlock closes his eyes and grins “Oh. Merely fine, was it? I shall strive for improvement the next time.”

Again, the cold pang of doubt begins to spread in John’s chest. “Will there be many next times, then?” He swallows. “You know you don’t have to…. You don’t owe me…”

Sherlock rolls to his side, pulls his manacled hand back between them enough to raise up on his elbow.

“I owe you everything, John.  I owe you my life many times over. I owe you a thousand apologies for what you suffered while I was gone.”

John’s eyes seek out Sherlock’s, but John doesn’t dare put into words what he wants to ask, what he needs to hear.

He doesn’t have to, however.

“You are my friend, John, my trusted, beloved friend.  You are everything.. the only thing… of importance to me, now. As you were then. As you have been since the beginning, John.”

John clears his throat, and his voice is little more than a husky whisper. “Thank you.”

Sherlock nods. “Is it all right… may I sleep here with you tonight?” he asks. “Or do you still wish me to sleep in my room? I’ve cleared the space.”

John raises an eyebrow and holds up their handcuffed wrists, a small laugh escaping his lips. “It doesn’t look like you’ll be leaving me, does it?”

Sherlock’s lips brush a soft kiss against John’s temple. He adjusts their captive arms and rests his head on John’s shoulder. 

“No, John.  Never again.  That I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Liveblogged" on Tumblr by Valeria2067 and idratherbereading (lawatsonholmes)
> 
> The title refers to the song of the same name by The National.


End file.
